Not for the first time a Downtown Parliamentary Reception coincided with political drama at Westminster. In 2022 it was Boris Johnson facing resignation over Partygate. On Wednesday, Cabinet support for Sir Keir Starmer was ebbing away at Prime Minister’s Questions as our great Downtown staff were preparing our event on the Terrace Pavillion.
The sun shone and the glasses clinked as politicians and business people from across the North mingled before a series of important speeches on the hot topic of the day. No not Mandelson (I’ll come to that and the local elections later) but devolution to Northern Towns.
Again, with impeccable Downtown timing the new Warrington and Cheshire Combined Authority was holding its first meeting while we celebrated this latest devolution move in London.
Alison McGovern is masterminding the rollout of mayoral led Combined Authorities and unitary local government across the country. The Birkenhead MP in the Local Government Minister and told us the North was still battling the effects of austerity, Brexit and Covid. She believed the devolution reforms would bring financial capital together with human and social capital to deliver prosperity. People with skin in the game, knowing what was needed locally was the answer.
Tom Riordan, the former CEO of Leeds Council is now the government’s northern envoy. Early this year he had got all the northern mayors to commit to a strategy based, particularly on delivering housing and rail. He acknowledged many false starts in schemes to deal with the chronic east-west rail problems in the north. However, he said spades were in the ground on Northern Powerhouse Rail. Leeds-Bradford would be next, followed by Liverpool-Warrington-Manchester.
Riordan acknowledged that Treasury scepticism had often held back devolution, but the Chancellor has now committed to a path for even more devolution. He ended by saying he wanted to particularly help mid-size businesses in the northern towns.
The final speaker was Steve Broomhead who is heading up the Northern Power Towns grouping. As former CEO of Warrington, he welcomed that day’s setting up of the new Combined Authority and said Lancashire would soon follow. He emphasised the importance of investing in jobs for the future like the new data centres in St Helens, Liverpool, and Manchester.
The day concluded with more networking between Downtown members and MPs.
So, a good day for Downtown but not for Sir Keir Starmer. I was in the press gallery to see the Prime Minister facing further Opposition attacks on his handling of the Mandelson Affair. What was significant was the stony-faced expressions of the Cabinet. I have thought up to know that the Iran war and lack of an obvious successor would keep Starmer in place. What puts this in doubt is disquiet over the sacking of top civil servant Sir Olli Robbins and, perhaps the final straw, the revelation that Starmer mooted the idea of finding an ambassadorial role for his former Director of Communications Lord Matt Doyle, now suspended from the party for campaigning for a sex offender.
Just what Labour needs as it goes into the biggest round of local elections in years.
In Scotland it looks as if they will fail to end twenty years of SNP rule. In Labour’s hundred-year stronghold of Wales, while it is Plaid and Reform that are neck and neck in the Senedd race.
In the north of England, Reform looks particularly strong in Gateshead, Sunderland, and Barnsley whilst Labour are neck and neck with Nigel Farage in the battle for the biggest local council in the country, Birmingham. The Lib Dems are the challengers in southern England.
Finally, we come to London where all 32 boroughs are up for election. The capital might provide a sliver of good news for Labour where they are narrowly ahead of the Greens, but it could be close.
There is rampant speculation now that a bad night will be the trigger for a challenge against the Prime Minister, but Streeting and Mahmood are too right wing for many activists, Rayner still has her tax problems and Burnham isn’t an MP.
